Artist Bio

Meet the Artist: Dan Klennert!

Our little girl

In
his hands, old horse shoes are fashioned into gigantic fish and horses.
Backhoe teeth become the jaws of a dinosaur and the drive lines of a
Ford van become its legs. Articles of scrap metal that once toiled in
fields or churned in engines are rescued from the trash and reborn as
remarkable sculptures. What society once used and then discarded as
junk, Dan instills with dignity and new meaning.

"My
love is preserving older pieces of metal that contain some history and
were made by the hands of man," Klennert says. "I feel I'm giving new
life to the tools and machines that made America what it is today."

Dan Klennert's sculptures, Spirits of Iron, have been displayed all across North America. "Bloodline," his larger than life-size thoroughbred created almost entirely out of horse shoes, and "Cleopatra,"
a life-size mare welded together from bits of scrap metal, charmed
thousands at the Thoroughbred Breeders Association Equine Art Show.
"Oscar" the fish eighteen feet long and twelve feet high was the catch
of the day at the Salmon Days Festival in Issaquah, Washington. "The Angel from Hell"
is a skeleton of a human riding a chopper motorcycle all made from
junk. This piece was a big hit when displayed during the motorcycle
convention in Sturgis, South Dakota. Other works made by Klennert have
been or are currently on display in Santa Fe, NM, Phoenix, AZ, Grand
Junction, CO, Salt Lake City, UT, Moab, UT, Portland, OR and throughout
Washington state. Proud owners of Klennert's art reside all over the
United States and Canada. He says, "I feel that I am giving joy to
people and new life to scrap metal through my work. I enjoy what I have
created and cherish the materials that go into my art."

Klennert
says, "I got started in this career when I was about 7 or 8 years old.
I was living in Seattle, and I'd take my red wagon and search through
neighborhood junk piles. I found great stuff that way and fell in love
with 'scrounging', or as we now know it, recycling. In school, I went
to class mostly for art on Friday. It was great! I just loved it."

By
age 22, Klennert was working as a mechanic and fell in love with old
gears, worn out sprockets and various other bent metals. Nothing could
suppress his creativity. "The shop foreman showed me how to glue two
pieces of metal with a welder, so I practiced welding by creating forms
of art out of junk," Klennert says. "I found a way to put together the
two things I loved, scrounging and art."

Klennert
gets his material for his sculptures from recycling bins, abandoned
farms, junkyards and sometimes from fans. He refers to it as "rusty
gold". "I visualize my sculptures from the shapes of the rusty junk and
go into a kind of creative, emotional trance when in my studio. I have
been known to work two days straight and it felt as if only eight hours
had gone by."

Dan
has realized a dream in the last few years at his four-acre sculpture
park located 3 miles east of Elbe, Washington. About this dream come
true, Klennert says, "It is a place where my metal offspring can run
free and my creative spirit can hang out long after I'm gone."

Klennert's
sculptures are fun for audiences, evoking grins and double-takes from
everyone who sees them. Adults will delight in his work because they
recognize familiar tools and objects reconfigured into something
totally new. Children enjoy the fantastical nature of the sculptures.
Klennert likes putting smiles on people's faces of all ages.

On
the surface, Dan Klennert's found-object sculptures are remarkable for
their scale and their realism. Looking deeper, his patchwork skeletons
become a lasting testament to the craftsmanship of artisans who made
the original objects Klennert incorporates into his art.